SURESOFT- A Framework for Sustainable Research Software Development and Deployment

研究软件对于许多学科实现科学进步具有根本重要性。该软件通常由科学家开发，具有获得特定结果的短期视角。这通常会导致难以扩展、维护和部署的软件实现。事实上，随着软件变得越来越复杂，由于缺乏代码质量，文档和未解决的缺陷，开发新功能的尝试会减慢科学过程。这种不可持续的开发终止于一个不可用的研究软件工件，导致需要重新实现软件。此外，复杂的可部署性可能会阻止在其他研究项目和教学中的广泛使用。总之，广泛和长期的使用，包括存档和再现性受到抑制，从而阻碍了科学研究质量和进展速度。为了解决这些限制，SURESOFT项目的目标是建立一个所有研究软件项目的通用可用方法和基础设施，基于持续集成的概念，作为提高研究软件质量的推动者，简化软件交付并确保长期可持续性和可用性。持续集成意味着并在早期验证更改，这对于敏捷开发环境特别有用，许多研究项目都是如此。因此，SURESOFT将设计一种基于持续集成机制的集成方法-软件自动构建、部署和测试。以持续集成为基础，SURESOFT将提供流程和工具，以便将软件轻松交付给感兴趣的研究人员，例如，作为即用型软件设备，不仅允许软件的广泛使用，而且还提供必要的开发工具，以便轻松扩展软件。此外，SURESOFT将使用持续集成的技术基础，以实现长期存档和结果的再现性。只保留软件的源代码会错过构建它所必需的支持，并忽略外部依赖关系-因此，必要的上下文也必须存档。此外，存档的项目必须不时重新验证，以确保结果仍然可以复制，例如，总之，SURESOFT专注于面向应用的e-Research技术的研究和开发。它涵盖电子研究技术方案的核心方面，因为它设计和开发新的技术、工具和方法，以处理和保护科学相关信息。它将使科学家能够有效地使用持续集成和相关的工具链，帮助部署，测试和存档，以创建可持续的研究软件。因此，将探讨综合办法的协同作用。

Research software is of fundamental importance for many disciplines to achieve scientific progress. The software is commonly developed by scientists, with a short-term perspective to gain specific results. Often this leads to software implementations that are hard to extend, maintain and deploy. In fact, as the software gets more and more complex, the attempt to develop new features slows down the scientific process due to the lack of code quality, documentation, and unresolved defects. Such unsustainable development terminates with an unusable research software artifact, inducing the need to reimplement the software. Furthermore, complex deployability may prevent the widespread use in the context of other research projects and teaching. In sum, widespread and long-term usage including archival and reproducibility is inhibited and consequently, the scientific research quality and progress pace are hindered.To address these limitations, the goal of the SURESOFT project is to establish a for all research software projects common usable methodology and infrastructure based on the concepts of continuous integration, as an enabler for improving the quality of research software, easing software delivery and ensuring long-term sustainability and availability. Continuous integration implies and validates changes early on. This is especially useful for agile development environments as is the case with many research projects. SURESOFT will, therefore, devise an integrated approach that is based on the mechanisms of continuous integration – the automated building of software, deployment, and testing. Taking continuous integration as a basis SURESOFT will provide processes and tools to easily deliver the software to interested researchers, e.g. as ready to use software appliance, not only to allow widespread use of the software but also to ship it with the necessary development tools to easily extend it. Moreover, SURESOFT will use the technical basis of continuous integration to enable long-term archival and the reproducibility of results. Archiving only the source code of software misses essential support to build it and omits external dependencies – accordingly, the necessary context has to be archived as well. Also, archived projects have to be revalidated from time to time to ensure that results can still be reproduced, e.g., despite changes in the hardware or software environment.In sum, SURESOFT focuses on application-oriented research and development of e-Research tech- nologies. It covers core aspects of the e-Research Technologies Programme as it designs and develops new technologies, tools and methods to process and safeguard scientifically relevant information. It will empower scientists to efficiently use continuous integration and the associated toolchain that aid deployment, testing and archiving to create sustainable research software. Thereby, the synergies of an integrate approach will be explored.